


The Floods Come in Spring

by Tawabids



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Dwalin and Dis have no timing at all, F/M, Huddling For Warmth, Kili has terrible timing, Near-death situations make fools of us all, Or a freezer, Semi-explicit birth scene, Sort-of Adultery, Trapped In A Closet, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-20
Updated: 2013-06-20
Packaged: 2017-12-15 14:26:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,687
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/850601
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tawabids/pseuds/Tawabids
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dwalin and Dis are trapped by rising floodwaters, and Dis has just gone into labour. Now is not the time to work out their unresolved sexual tension, but dammit, stubborn dwarves will do what they want and these are two of the stubbornest in Middle Earth.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Floods Come in Spring

**Author's Note:**

> [For this prompt at the kinkmeme](http://hobbit-kink.livejournal.com/5346.html?thread=10999010#t10999010). I keep trying to write Thorin/Dwalin and it gets stuck and instead I wrote this, which is the exact opposite to what I wanted the Thorin/Dwalin to be.

“I don’t like how that rain’s coming,” said Dis, shielding her eyes to keep the drips out as she gazed towards the mountains. “It’s black as tar way north.”

Dis didn’t like the look of anything, most of the time. Not the new tattoo on her husband’s arm, not the pony Dwalin had brought her family when he and Thorin arrived, not the state of Thorin after Dwalin had taken him on a hunt. She complained about weather and food and the state of the roads and most particularly about friends she hadn’t seen in a very long time. It was as if she still compared the whole world to Erebor at its finest, and would never be satisfied with anything less. The only thing she never complained about was the only bit of gold that eclipsed her grandfather’s lost treasures – and even Fili didn’t escape a scolding when he deserved it. 

“It’s a bit of rain, princess,” Dwalin replied, shoving the branches aside as they clambered down the wild slopes. “It won’t kill you.”

He was feeling rather stormy himself. The rain was in his boots and his eyes and down the back of his neck. He didn’t have a thick oilcoat on like Dis, with its wool-lined sleeves and collar. He _could_ have had one. Dis had offered him one out the door, but he’d said, ‘Why don’t you knit me a hat while you’re at it?’ and turned it down. He was regretting that now. He seemed to always find himself regretting things around Thorin’s sister. 

“I’m just saying,” Dis insisted, tightening the fat knot she had tied in her skirts to keep them out of the way. She stepped from the slumping clay to muddy rock with surprising grace, given her thick clothes and the heavy bulge of her belly. “Maybe we should turn back.”

“You want to give up?” Dwalin held out his hand to help her over a particularly spiny bramble. “You dragged us all the way out here. We’re not turning back now.”

“You didn’t have to come!” Dis ignored his hand, opting to hang off a thick branch to lever herself over the brambles.

“I said I’d help you find your wool-brained animal and that’s what I intend to do,” Dwalin growled.

“Pah,” Dis flicked her hood and sent the drops that had collected on the rim bursting through the air. “You aren’t here to help. You’re here to play bodyguard.”

“I am not!”

“I don’t need a bodyguard,” Dis rolled her eyes at him. “And I definitely don’t need a thumping great warrior following me around scaring my sheep because he’s bored without a war to go to.”

Dwalin looked away, gritting his teeth. He disagreed entirely. With Vili as sick as he was, Dis needed the help. Thorin was always in town organising the new building project and she had her hands full enough with a four-year-old who couldn’t stop shoving things in his mouth. But the bigger her belly got, the more determined she seemed to do everything on her own. It was as if she liked the misery. As if it was the only way she defined herself any more. And the harder she worked, the older she got, the more she complained, and the more Dwalin felt like the dwarrowdam with a laugh like stones rolling down a mineshaft was slipping away into his distant memory. 

Dis paused, standing two steps ahead with her face turned back towards him. He could just see her long, pale nose peeking out from behind the hood and the curve of her lips beneath her neatly-plaited moustache. “It’s not that I don’t appreciate the thought—” she said, sounding like she was choking on the words, and then her hand flew to her belly. “Oof. Little blighter.”

“Kicking hard?”

“He’s as keen for a fight as you are,” Dis glanced back at him, a smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. “I’m glad he’ll be a spring baby. I can’t manage two of them and the farm, but Vili’s going to get healthy once the days go proper warm.”

“That’s what the healer said?”

She took a moment to answer and seemed on the verge of replying, but at that moment Dwalin cried out.

“There! There’s the rotter!” he grabbed her shoulder and pointed. “Down there on that big island. How’d she get there?”

Dis frowned down the hill. A steep upthrust of boulders and granite rose above a small, grass-edged stream, with the river raging on the far side. The wayward sheep stood on a flat patch of green at the bottom of the rocks, bleating at the muddy waters. 

“Wait,” Dis reached for Dwalin’s hand. “There’s no island there normally.”

Dwalin didn’t know what she was talking about. He couldn’t wait to get back to a warm hearth and hot stew. He bounded down the rest of the slope and leaped the stream without a second thought. The sheep shied away from him, bouncing on its skinny legs, but there was nowhere for it to go with the river at its back 

“Come here, you troublesome wretch,” Dwalin muttered, spreading his arms to corner it against the wall of the boulders.

“Dwalin!” Dis’ voice called for him through the endless gush of the rain. “Dwalin, come back!”

“I’ve almost got her,” Dwalin yelled over his shoulder. The sheep was backed against the rock, stamping its front hoof unhappily.

_“Dwalin!”_

Her voice was much closer now. Dwalin looked up to find Dis wading through the stream, reaching one arm towards him. “Come back! Come quickly!”

“What d’ya think, she’ll headbutt me—”

And then he realised the roar of the rain was much louder than it had been a moment ago. But it wasn’t the rain. Dis was climbing out of the stream, but the stream clung to her heels as if it had a mind of its own. It was much wider than when Dwalin had leapt over it barely a minute ago. The roar was growing. Dwalin looked up the river and saw the brown torrent tearing branches from the trees. 

“Climb! Climb!” he bellowed, grabbing Dis’ arm and hauling her up out of the water. The green patch they stood on was being eaten up moment by moment. Dwalin crouched and wrapped his arms around Dis’ legs, heaving her off her feet and practically throwing her up onto the nearest boulder. She knelt to take his hand and pull him after her just as the last trace of grass disappeared. The water sucked at Dwalin’s boot and almost jerked him back down. He heard the sheep crying out and in of the corner of his eye saw the dirty white shape swept off into the river, dragged down to its death in moments.

The water was rising faster than they could climb, but the newly formed island was tall. They went as high as they could, Dwalin’s heart pounding and his tongue letting loose every curse he knew. The granite had an angled split at the top like a broken loaf, with just enough room between the overhang and the boulders for two dwarves to shelter from the stinging wind. They wedged themselves in and stared down at the raging flood. Huge logs as long as houses swung past and beat themselves against the drowned trunks of the trees and the side of the hill. Dwalin wrapped his arms around Dis’ shoulders as much for his own comfort as hers, his head reeling. He felt as if he had spun around on the spot too many times. 

“I’ve never seen water rise like that!” he spluttered.

“I’ve seen it from a distance,” Dis called back. The river was loud enough that she had to raise her voice. 

“Will it reach us?”

She shuddered in his grip. Measuring straight down there was still a good twenty feet between them and the churning surface, but there had been twice that a few minutes ago. She shrugged. “I don’t know,” she gave a sharp cry. “My baby!”

“His Da will keep him safe,” Dwalin soothed. The village was built high up above the small tributary that flowed closest to it, and Dis’ farmhouse was even further up the mountain. Fili and his father would have nothing more to deal with than a slippery path and perhaps a few leaks in the roof.

“No, Dwalin, I think…” Dis turned towards him, their heads close enough that her chin brushed his beard. She clenched her fist around a handful of the oilskin that hid her belly. “That didn’t feel like a kick.”

Dwalin’s eyes widened. “Tell me you’re pulling my leg.”

“I hope so,” she took a breath and tugged her hood further over her face. “Either way, we’ll just have to wait it out.”

The river marched past below, hungry and endless. Dwalin felt stupid and furious for not turning back when Dis had said to, and then just angry that she hadn’t explained the danger, and then stupid again for being angry. And there was the familiar regret again, the eternal sense of mistakes made and decisions botched. He’d never felt that way on the battlefield, not even when things turned out badly. He only felt it around Dis.

They sat hunched in the split rock and spoke little for more than an hour as the water level rose slowly but steadily. Dwalin kept his eye on deformities and landmarks in the stones and hillside across the way, watching as each new mark was very slowly swallowed up one by one. Their limbs were growing stiff and their muscles began to cramp, but there was no room to stretch and every movement let the cold air into the gaps in their clothes. It wasn’t just the water that Dwalin feared now but the cold and exposure. If the wind picked up again, it would suck the life from them with dreadful speed.

“Maybe I can swim it,” he said, craning his neck to look over the edge. He could hurry back and get help, bring axes and ropes to cut down one of those tall pines make a bridge for Dis.

“No!” Dis thrust her arm across his chest. “The current’s too strong. You’ve no idea.”

“You doubt me so much?” 

“Can’t you just trust me for once?” her face screwed up and her mouth gaped for a moment. “Ah – ah,” she shook her head. “He’s definitely coming. The wee beast! If I don’t make it, you name him _bundâl_.”

Dwalin broke into laughter. “You want that to be your last request, princess?” The word meant _pack-leader_ , the animal at the front of a team of horses or hunting wolves – and was synonymous with the bitch in heat who lead dog-sledding packs. 

“Tell Vili it was my dying wish,” she grinned weakly at him and then bit her lip as another contraction wrung her belly like a wet rag. 

By the end of the next hour they were coming one after another with no break, like waves of an assault. Dwalin thought he was no stranger to pain in all its forms, whether fighting it himself or comforting it in others, but it had never affected him like this. He felt scoured and exposed beneath Dis’ curses and wordless cries. Her pain went on and on, over and over, spilling over into him with each new contraction. He could do nothing but hold her head and comb his fingers through her hair, bracing her against the rock so she didn’t have to keep propping herself up. There was no relief from the endless rain, though by some small mercy the wind was still at bay. 

“Dwalin,” Dis panted. “You must check. Check how wide I am.”

Dwalin spluttered. “Can’t you tell? I won’t… that’s for your husband!”

“By Durin, you coward! You’ll face the orc chieftans but you won’t look under my skirts?” she hit out at him weakly. A vivid memory sprang unbidden into his mind, of a little princess wearing her brother’s hand-me-downs, kicking at the shins of a laughing, beardless dwarfling, _You told Mama! I hate you, Frerin! You snitch!_ He didn’t remember, now, what Frerin had told their mother, but Dis had always had so many secrets to covet. 

“Alright, alright, but only because I’m more afraid of you than orcs,” Dwalin steadied her between the planes of the rock and clambered down, resting one knee between Dis’ legs. In the pouring rain he lifted away the folds of her oilskin and rolled up her woolen dress. Her calves bracketed him like a pale dream, and he hated himself for not being able to forget how much he had wanted to be here, once upon a time, had wanted this to be both their blood mingling in her womb. But love was duty now, and his princess needed him. 

“Dwalin?” she panted, and grunted in pain again. “Tell me.”

“Wide as my palm, Dis,” he nodded at her. “Surely it can’t take much more longer, can it?”

“Fili’s head was— _ah!_ ” She threw her head back. “Dwalin, Dwalin, _charachel_ —”

“I’ve got you,” Dwalin gripped her thigh, suddenly wracked with panic – what did he do? Should he have a cloth to take the child, would she tear, did they need water? And then he realised he could see the crown and it all happened so fast. In a moment there was a child in his hands, limp and grey-red, with a plastered head of black hair and trailing his chord. Dwalin came so close to dropping the slippery thing that he swore, and broke into laughter.

Dis groaned and fell back across the boulder, her head lolling on her neck. Dwalin couldn’t take his eyes off it – him – the new, tiny dwarf in his arms. He fitted completely in both of Dwalin’s palms and was shifting against his calloused skin, eyes still closed tight and nostrils flaring. His pink fists were clenched. _Keen for a fight,_ Dwalin thought, _just like she said._

“Is he alive?” Dis raised her head. Her face was white and lost.

“Yes, yes!” Dwalin leaned across the boulder to hold him out, grinning broadly. “As alive as either of us, anyway!”

“You were so quiet, I feared—” Dis let out a huge sigh, “Thank you, thank you,” she tipped her head back and spoke to the heavens. “Ancesters or gods or anything, thank you.”

She couldn’t sit up until she and Dwalin gripped each other’s wrists, with the infant held tight in Dwalin’s elbow. She made him stay between her legs and ease out the afterbirth. There was blood on her skirts, and worse, but not much. Dis gave a tired laugh at his face as he bit through the cord and finally passed the baby into her shaking arms.

She mewled as she stared at the new dwarf, a smile breaking across her face even as she said, "Oh, I don't like the look of him. He's too skinny."

"He's early is all," Dwalin said, resting his head on her knee to gaze up at the pink, wrinkled creature. At that moment the baby opened its mouth and screamed. It drowned out the roar of the river, the drumming of the rain and the crunch of the broken trees, it filled the world and beneath it Dis laughed properly at last, a deep laugh like stones rolling down a mineshaft.

"You poor thing," she slid the baby inside her coat, against her bare skin, pulling the wool lining up around him so that he was squished into a warm pocket against her breast. Dwalin was terrified that he would be smothered in there, but he didn't want to question Dis. He didn't think he'd ever question Dis again, after what she had just done. And through her clothes the baby continued to wail up and down the octaves, so he couldn't be smothered yet. Dis rocked from side to side. "I know, love, I know. You're cold and wet and angry. So am I."

Dwalin climbed up to join her and tried to cover her fully with his body. They rested for some time. The rain washed the blood from the rock and from Dwalin’s hands. He couldn’t believe that they would drown here. It was so senseless, after all the swords and spears he’d survived, after what Dis had just gone through. 

But the water had no sense of honour. 

"Dis," he looked over the edge of their tiny stone shelter. "The river is rising again."

Dis stared serenely down at the deadly waters. Her face was white and her teeth were chattering a little. Dwalin tugged her in close again and she tucked her face against his neck. "If it reaches us," she said, her voice reverberating against his throat, "if there's only room for one on top of the peak, you take the baby and stand there."

"There'll be room for two," Dwalin cut her off, aghast.

"I may not be able to stay on my feet long," Dis' hand crept across her chest to link together with Dwalin's fingers. "You can hold on much longer, even with the water at your ankles. You stand to attention and you hold the baby close to your heart until it recedes. You're a warrior and I'm royalty and you'll do as I tell you."

The first brown tongues of the flood were spilling into the cracks where the granite was split. Dis pulled her feet up higher. 

"I can hold you both up," Dwalin said. "I always will.”

“You liar,” Dis whispered. He could feel her lips moving against his neck.

He bit down on the inside of his cheek, shaking his head. “Always.”

"Then why did you go to war?" Dis mumbled. "Why did you leave me?"

Dwalin groaned. That wasn’t fair. Why now, why would she ask that? “My king needed me—”

“You chose your king. And you’ll choose Thorin, when the time comes, and I’ll be left standing alone. Don’t tell me that you’ll be there if you won’t.”

"Why do you always blame me? Why do you always see the worst in me?"

Dis drew her head back. "I don't! But that's all you hear, you think every word I say to you is a sword you have to parry!" Dis clenched her fingers around his, her grip suddenly like a steel vice. "You would never have been satisfied with less than my total surrender, like yet another army before you. You wanted me to give everything, to risk losing everything, like all the other war-women who were widows even while their husbands lived. Like my mother, always waiting back at camp with a smile and open arms. I couldn't do it."

"I came back," Dwalin countered. "I came back for you and you had married without me."

Dis' voice broke now, hoarse with rage. "That wasn't the problem. You were always a warrior first, like Thorin and Frerin, like Papa and Grandfather. Why do you think I married a farmer? I needed something that wasn't sitting forever and watching the war through a window, Dwalin, I needed something more. You came back and Thorin came back but no one else, and I knew then – I knew I'd made the right choice. You'll leave again and next time only Thorin will come home, or neither of you. And I'll be proud and I'll love you both and it won't make a lick of difference to how dead you are."

The torrent was spilling over the rock where they stood and pulling at the hem of her skirt. Dwalin hauled her to her feet, holding her tight around the waist like a boat moored with chains. The baby had stopped crying. 

“We have to climb up,” he said. 

“There isn’t room,” Dis looked at the narrow edge of the granite that stretched to their head-height. It was thinner than a roof-beam and slippery with rain. 

“Then you climb up, and I’ll hang on below,” Dwalin begged.

“I won’t,” she pressed in against him as the water brushed her boots. “I won’t last as long as you.”

“I would have broken my oath and stayed behind if you’d asked,” he said, feeling tears pricking his eyes, invisible in the rain. He tightened his arm around her waist. “If you’d only asked.”

“And I would have sworn the king’s oaths and fought beside you,” Dis said. “If you’d asked,” she turned her face up to him. Her eyes were red and her voice was rough as she said, "Kiss me. Now, before the water comes."

He clenched his arm around the back of her neck, her hood crinkling in the joint of his elbow and her hair flowing into his tattoos like braided rivers joining. The baby was pressed between them, wriggling with the strength of a life not yet lived. Dis’ lips were blue with cold and spilled blood and he kissed them and felt new heat rush into them. He closed his eyes and tried to keep this, tried to fill himself with this moment to make up for all the might-have-beens. The water was around their ankles, incredibly heavy and strong for only a few inches, and he let go of her shoulders to latch his hand around the sharp edge of the rock and anchor them, the tendons bulging in his wrist. Dis tightened an arm around his neck and another onto the rock beside him, but she didn’t release his mouth.

The water tugged at their hems, and they waited to drown, and neither of them let go of the rock or each other. But soon enough the baby began to cry again. Dwalin realised he could not feel the raindrops on his scalp. He opened his eyes and raised his head. 

“The storm,” he murmured, kissing Dis’ brow. “It’s breaking.”

 

It was hours longer before the river receded low enough to cross the stream. They sat side by side trying to stay warm in the fitful sunlight, Dis nursing the baby and sleeping on and off, sometimes at the same time. As the water went down it slowed, and by waist-high it was sluggish enough for Dwalin to wade, very slowly and carefully, with Dis on his back and the baby in a sling across his chest. 

They were found by Thorin and the rescue team before they crested the first slope and brought home safe by nightfall. Dis’ husband was in the doorway with a blanket around his shoulders and Fili on his hip. Dwalin stood back as she pushed Thorin’s arm away and staggered up the path to greet them, wrapping her arms around Vili’s shoulders and kissing him and Fili over and over. 

Inside the house was a roaring fire and fresh clothes, and the hot stew that Dwalin had dreamed about. Thorin combed out Dwalin’s hair and rebraided it while Vili showed Fili his new baby brother, now clean and wrapped up in a thick blanket. 

On cue, Fili began to cry. “I don’t like the look of him, Da, he’s ugly,” he sobbed, and Vili laughed and tucked his son under his arm.

 _They could have been my sons,_ Dwalin thought, but not with anger. He didn’t make oaths for kings. He made them for the children who might live better after the battle was won. His own, and Dis’, but not necessarily either or both. Dwalin felt exhaustion finally getting the better of him under the familiar rhythm of Thorin’s fingers through his hair. 

“I thought I’d lost you both,” Thorin said softly, breaking him out of his doze. “When we realised how bad the river was flooded, I was so afraid. It would have been such a foolish way for a warrior to die, Dwalin – drowning in search of a sheep.”

Dwalin watched Dis shuffle back into the hearth-room with a huge shawl clasped around her body and imagined her bleeding her life onto the boulder beneath her legs, or swept away into the torrent. He heard the pain in Vili’s cough as his own laugh tore at his sickness-riddled body. He imagined how quickly the cold might have snuffed out the new baby if they’d been stuck there much longer. Dwalin shook his head. 

“There are no foolish deaths,” he said. “Only foolish choices.”

 

He found himself awake very early in the morning. The sky was still thick and drizzling, so he couldn’t tell how close they were to dawn, but he found Dis awake in the hearth-room. She sat in a wicker chair lined with blankets, nursing the new baby at her breast. His dark little eyes stared, unfocused, at the ceiling as Dwalin leaned over the back of the chair to touch his knuckle to the baby’s forehead. The skin was soft as chick-down. 

He chuckled. “Hello, you little _bundâl_. No harm done, then?”

“He’s offended that I called him skinny, I think,” Dis leaned her head back against Dwalin’s arm. “Feeding every hour. I’m so _tired_ , Dwalin.”

“Aye, if I could help there, I surely would,” Dwalin sighed. “But milk’s one thing I can’t offer.”

Dis gave a huff that was almost a laugh. The coals were still crackling in the grate. They stood in silence for a while. Dwalin thought Dis had gone to sleep.

“Don’t tell Vili,” said Dis suddenly.

Dwalin rumbled, “Of course I won’t.”

“No, I mean – about how close we came,” a blush glowed in her pale cheeks. “To being drowned, rather. How close the river got to us. He worries so much as it is.”

“Alright, we’ll just say we got stuck in a cave somewhere,” Dwalin dipped his head. “Are… are there a lot of things you don’t tell Vili?”

Dis’ cheeks grew even redder, or perhaps it was just the coals flaring brighter for a moment. “A few,” she said. “Here and there.”

 

Dwalin and Thorin went back to Ered Luin that summer. Dwalin did not return to visit Thorin’s sister the next year, nor the next, and when Vili finally died the winter after that he was busy rooting orcs out of the Blue Mountains and could not go to her – which was perhaps for the best. After that the mining caravans needed guarding on every journey, and he had to stay with them, as he was one of Thorin’s best commanders. The years kept passing, and there was always something, and when he finally made the journey next he found her lads were already big enough to help around the farm. Thorin had sent a letter with a litany of rigorous skills he wanted his nephews to begin learning, and Dis stood by and let Dwalin put wooden swords in her sons’ hands and correct their stances as they chased chickens around the back yard. But she had a list of her own with tasks for Dwalin; sheds that needed building and fences that needed repairing and an old ram that was too decrepit to mount anything anymore and had to be culled. She quirked her eyebrow as he came back to the house carrying the beast on his shoulders.

“You’re still good for mutton, then,” she said, and he laughed as he passed her. 

Dwarves don’t marry twice. It is their way. But they love as often as any other race, and don’t blink at widows and widowers moving in together to warm each other’s beds and even bring new children into the world; the term for bastard in Khuzdul does not mean ‘born outside of marriage’ but _after_ it, and is not derogatory as in the Westron word. Dwalin thought that probably Dis would have come to Ered Luin with him if he’d asked, with the boys who were his because they were hers (for that was all that mattered). He knew for certain that if she’d asked he would have stayed on the farm, not just for that summer, but for all the years to come. 

But he didn’t ask her, and she didn’t ask him – not yet.


End file.
